ABTM Star Joshua Tan Is Now Engaged To 22YO Med School Student

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Zhi Hao
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Instagram. A source of entertainment…

As well as heartfelt news.

That’s right, I’m appealing to all you Joshua Tan & Zoen Tay fans. As you would surely be aware by now, the adorable pair have announced their engagement on the social media platform site, and boy…

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It was simply gorgeous.

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The 1 🖤

A post shared by TAY ZOEN (@tayzoen) on

But how did it go, exactly? And did it really proceed without the traditional ‘proposal hiccups’?

Well, let’s find out.

First Things First

Now, you might’ve expected someone of Joshua Tan’s calibre to handle such mundane stuff as proposals with absolute ease. After all, he did play Ken Chow, a reformed recruit who excelled in leadership school and grew up to be immaculately refined (with an equally refined wine belly).

Image: square75 – WordPress.com

But well, reality’s that reel life isn’t quite real life, no matter what Deadpool preaches. Because it seems that even Joshua Tan had to go through the traditional ‘proposal hiccups’ that have plagued entire generations of men.

Damn, what a sight to behold.

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Though before that, let’s peek into how it all happened. As a Wise Old Man once preached: “There’s no end without a beginning, no result without a cause.”

According to local site 8 Days, Joshua had jioed Zoen for a photo-shoot, which was admittedly nothing “unusual” for the latter.

“He told me that we were going for a photoshoot, which isn’t unusual for him, because we’ve done like two other shoots together before,” the medical student told 8 Days. Joshua’s also always springing surprises on me, so I didn’t find it out of the ordinary.”

But things began to get stranger. Having gone to a shopping mall, Joshua then gave her his credit card and told her in no uncertain terms to pick out what she wanted for the shoot.

There was apparently “no limit on how much [she could] spend” either.

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Image: Giphy

What a man, Joshua. What a man.

Thankfully, it seems that his spouse is one of equal caliber as well, as she modestly turned down the option of maxing out Joshua’s credit limit. Instead, she opted for a slick black dress that cost less than three digits, and they swiftly headed off to the Botanic Gardens for their “shoot” with their friend Jaegen.

Enter Customary And Mandatory Romantic Speech

When Joshua launched into a romantic speech halfway through the shoot, Zoen expressed that it was still not quite out of the ordinary. According to her, he often does that to set the mood.

But then everything changed, when he got down on one knee.

“Her first reaction was like, No, no, no! Not just one no but she kept saying no,” Joshua told 8 Days. “She said no so many times that the photographer lowered his camera and asked us, ‘It’s a ‘No’?’” With that, Zoen snapped back to reality and said, ‘No… I mean ‘Yes!’ It’s a yes to the proposal!”

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And to make things worse, Joshua was reportedly having a little bit of trouble getting the ring box out of his back pocket.

“You know how it is with men’s trousers,” he says. “The back pockets aren’t very flexible, so I was like, trying to get the ring box out while she was saying ‘No’. Not really the proposal that I envisioned.”

That, I could imagine. Had my partner been echoing ‘no’ while I was desperately trying to retrieve my ring box, I would probably have launched myself into the bushes.

And It Was Reciprocated… In More Ways Than One

After the proposal, Joshua set off for a family vacation before returning to Singapore three days later, where his now-fiancée was waiting.

She then brought him to a corner and commenced her own romantic speech, which triggered some serious alarm bells in his head.

“I thought she was going to give me the ring back,” Joshua said. “I was freaking out.”

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But she didn’t. Instead, she presented him with a gift: a cross pendant necklace that matches hers.

“We have an ‘ai stead mai’ ring that I gave her when I first asked her to be my girlfriend. I have one too, but I lost it once when I was working out — though we don’t talk about that. I went back to the same store to get the same one, so I still wear it all the time. She said I can now add the ring on the necklace so that I won’t lose it,” the 29-year-old beam. It’s worth noting that Zoen was shooting daggers at Joshua with her eyes at this point.

And just to clarify, the pair have expressed that it’s not a shotgun wedding.

With a number of high-profile shotgun weddings in the news recently, it’s no surprise that they have stepped out to clarify the fact.

A Wedding & Honeymoon Extravaganza

According to 8 Days, Joshua has left the wedding date to Zoen’s own discretion. And apparently, she has been doing some serious thinking.

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“I haven’t really thought about when we’ll have our wedding ceremony. For now, we’re just enjoying the process of being engaged,” the UNSW Sydney undergraduate, who has two years left to graduation, said. “I think having it around the same time as my graduation will be nice.”

Note: The wedding ring in question is supposedly an actual stunner that was purchased in New York with the help of his friends.

As for the wedding ceremony, the pair has agreed on an intimate notion, with plans for two ceremonies: one just for them and their loved ones, and one more for the elders to invite anyone they want to.

“We want to keep it as small as possible, but at the same time, there are certain things that the elders are understandably hoping for. They’re important to us, but we’re important too. That’s why we’re toying with the idea of having two ceremonies,” they muse.

And for their honeymoon phase, the pair, who are both Christians, have set their eyes on a place that’s religiously significant to them:

Israel.

According to the report, they’ve also begun to window shop for potential homes.

And to end off, Joshua has a rather interesting analogy for his engagement plan.

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“The ring is like a packet of tissue paper — a very expensive one I used to chope her first,” Joshua chuckles. “I’ve seen friends who dated for years and their relationship just fizzled out after that. I also wanted to bring our relationship to the next level, and this engagement is our promise to each other that we’ll be there for each other no matter what.”

Image: Instagram (tayzoen)

Well, that’s what Ken Chow would’ve said, probably.

Looks like reel life’s not so different from real life after all, huh?

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Zhi Hao
Email: [email protected]